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Money isn't everything in politics. Opening the "floodgates" to massive spending on behalf of candidates is an effective way of spreading the wealth around, but not an effective way of determining the future of the U.S. government.

People of great wealth spent billions of dollars to tell the rest of America how to vote. Other people of great wealth spent more billions to counter the first group. The money ended up in the hands of printers, TV and cable outlets, airlines, ad agencies, time-buyers, political operatives, and landlords.

The single biggest source of campaign funds was Sheldon Adelson, a Nevada casino owner who spent $53 million this year, mostly on losers, primarily on Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Of course, he started the year with a net worth of something like $20 billion, so there's a lot more where that came from.

Adelson was widely condemned for mixing business with politics. The Center for American Progress Action Fund calculated that Adelson could save $2 billion in taxes if his candidate, Romney, could enact his tax-cut plans. The fund and its affiliates are supported by a variety of Democrats, including George Soros.

An overheated Bloomberg report during the Republican convention also fingered Adelson for treating Romney as a "sound investment." It said Adelson's investments in Macau casinos would become more valuable in dollar terms if Romney was successful in making the Chinese let the yuan rise in value.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is worth a few billion more than Adelson, also put his money to work in the 2012 campaign—less of it, with more sophistication, but with only slightly better results. Bloomberg targeted California Republican Representative Joe Baca with $3.3 million of negative TV ads in the last 10 days of a lackluster, low-spending campaign, and the unknown, underfinanced Democrat won the election. Bloomberg also used the same last-minute, big-spending tactic to support other House candidates, including a Florida Democrat, a Republican in Illinois, and another in Connecticut. Those three lost.

Contrary to last spring's fevered expectations about big business buying the election, the Center for Responsible Politics tally shows seven of the top 10 organizations funding super-PACs in 2012 were labor unions supporting Democrats. The Republicans' biggest donors were mostly individuals. Overall, fund raising and ad spending for President Barack Obama and Democrats were nearly as successful, and considerably more effective, than the efforts for Mitt Romney and Republicans.

If money mattered in the 2012 campaign, it mattered most in the early going for the Republican nomination. Romney, the eventual nominee, had to run a gantlet of hostile campaigning and attack ads from rivals in his own party. Then, when Romney had the nomination safely in hand, his campaign was short of money to counter another barrage of ads, this time from a well-financed Obama campaign that had no contest for the nomination. Romney's carefully nurtured reputation as a business manager was buried under attacks from both sides.

The $6 billion campaign for federal offices was about 13% more expensive than the previous record election, in 2008, but so what? The surprising thing about campaign spending should not be how much is spent, but how little.

The federal government will spend more than $15 trillion over the next four years. Although about half of that consists of transfer payments to entitled beneficiaries and pensioners, the president and Congress have a great deal of influence over the programs and administrators who spend the other half.

Yet American businesses and their executives generally do not spend money on campaigns in proportion to their potential profit.

American politics is far from being an efficient market, where huge investment returns are competed away. Instead of a few billionaires investing $100 million to make $2 billion over four years, a crowd of Adelsons and Bloombergs and a crowd of corporations should be spending billions each on electoral campaigns.

Be glad they are not doing that—yet. Also remember that a government of great power can be a government of too much value to the wrong people.

Ask for the Moon

Cashing in on Disaster Relief for a Rich Region

In New York, they call it chutzpah. In Washington, they call it an opening bid. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo last week asked for $30 billion in federal disaster aid for cleanup, reconstruction, and new "investments" in infrastructure after the big storm. And that's just the first page of the bill. The governors of New Jersey and Connecticut have not been so forward, but they surely will have demands of their own, and the total could hit $50 billion.

"Just reimbursing the out-of-pocket expenses does not come close to making up for the economic damage that has been done to this state and this region," Cuomo said, asking for extra money to make new.

The federal government appropriated more than $60 billion in the first two years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf coasts of Mississippi and Alabama—a smaller area damaged with less valuable property. Total federal spending in the region has surpassed $120 billion.

"We expect to be treated in exactly the same way that the victims of Katrina were treated," said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. "They were treated very generously by the American people, and I think that's what the American people would want, and we expect to get exactly the same treatment."

That would not be appropriate. Connecticut, New Jersey and New York are the first, second, and ninth states in per capita wealth, while Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are 41st, 43rd, and 50th in per capita wealth.

Sandy left a genuine disaster in its wake. There are genuine needs and genuine expenses that someone must cover. But the first place to look is within the region.